Watching a tropical system that could impact Florida

I'm watching a couple of tropical systems in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Gaston has sustained wind of 70 mph, but it’s way out in the eastern Atlantic and no immediate threat to land.

Invest 99L is the other with 30 mph wind as it moves out of the northern Lesser Antilles Islands toward Puerto Rico. It is expected to become a tropical depression very soon. All eyes in the southeast and gulf coast are closely watching the track of this system. It’s still early in the game though. Let’s look at the potential strength and track of this system which is set to be named “Hermine” (her meen). This is nerdy weather stuff for those of you hard core weather fans.

The five day tropical outlook from NOAA show the formation potential of this system from Cuba to the Bahamas. It will likely be an organized system before it reaches those areas.

This is a spaghetti plot. Each line represents a different forecast model. There is pretty good agreement this system makes it to south Florida but some models take it on into the Gulf while a few others take it along the east coast of Florida and back out to see. The future strength and speed of the system will help determine it's path down the road along with the synoptic or large scale setup.

The GFS model below is surprisingly weak with this system and has it eventually going back out into the Atlantic. The stronger hurricane on the right is Gaston and should not impact this region.

The European model below is very high on taking this system into the Gulf. All the different runs are represented here.

Below is a graphic showing the depth of the heat potential with this system. The warm waters in the Caribbean will definitely feed this system but interacting with some of the small land masses may actually keep it from being stronger. That would be good!